Thank you, St. Martin’s Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Outmaneuvered: America’s Tragic Encounter with Warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan, by James A. Warren.

This book will be released on March 4, 2025.

This is an excellent book about the failures of the US military from Vietnam to the present. The book makes the powerful case that the reasons for the failures was a result of our presidents, and their top civilian advisers not understanding the situations they were in and not understanding that the strategies didn’t have a chance of succeeding. The military advisers who understood and advised against them were ignored in favor of the policy makers just listening to what they already wanted to hear and just doing what their pre-conceived policy objectives were.

The largest portions of the book were about Vietnam and the second Iraq War, while it also covered the events in Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and the CIA’s role in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

I give this book an A. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on September 29, 2024.